My mother loves to get me things, loves to get anyone things really. She also loves to “garage-sale,” which she has turned into a verb. So what this means is that I get a lot of things that I never needed, nor wanted really. I call these her “here, you throw this away” gifts. Some of them are simply mind-boggling in their ridiculousness, hideousness, or uselessness, however, I love those in comparison to the items that are almost useful, but just not quite, because then there’s not even humor of the ridiculous, just sadness at the slightly missed target.

My mom is a smart cookie, though, and she’s realized that I’ve started to enjoy the ridiculous gifts, so she seems to consistently try to top herself. Probably one of the biggest gems she’s ever given me was a powered singing Christmas tree named “Douglas Fir.” I took him into the office, entertaining my co-workers, even frightening them at times. However, after the joke was used a few times, there wasn’t much else to do with it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. I found so much humor in Douglas’ vain effort to be festive, that always came off just kind of scary. So he found a new home in one of the spare cubicles.

Well I knew the day would come. We just recently had to clean out all our storage space at work, and I could no longer justify holding on to old Doug. So with one last plugin, one last song, one last laugh, I forlornly carried Douglas to the dumpster and bid farewell.

So long Douglas Fir!